war for the hell of it a fighter pilots view of vietnam

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Ed, "Fast Eddie," Cobleigh served two tours of duty during the Vietnam air war, logging 375 combat sorties in the F-4 Phantom fighter/bomber. In War for the Hell of It, Cobleigh shares his perspectives in a deeply personal account of a fighter pilot's life, one filled with moral ambiguity and military absurdities offset by the undeniable thrill of flying a fighter aircraft. With well-crafted prose that puts you into the Phantom's cockpit, Cobleigh vividly recounts the unexplainable loss of his wingman, the useless missions he flew, the need to trust his reflexes, eyesight, and aggressiveness, and his survival instincts in the heat of combat. He discusses the deaths of his squadron mates and the contradictions of a dirty, semi-secret war fought from beautiful, exotic Thailand. This is an unprecedented look into the state of mind of a pilot as he experiences everything from the carnage of a crash to the joy of flying through a star-studded night sky, from the illogical political agendas of Washington to his own dangerous addiction to risk. Cobleigh gives a stirring and emotional description of one man's journey into airborne hell and back, recounting the pleasures and the pain. the wins and the losses. and ultimately, the return.

The untold story of the most important rescue mission not just of the Vietnam War, but the entire Cold War: one American aviator, who knew our most important secrets, crashed behind enemy lines and risked capture by both the North Vietnamese and the Soviets. One Navy SEAL and his Vietnamese partner had to sneak past them all to save him. At the height of the Vietnam War, few American airmen are more valuable than Lt. Colonel Gene Hambleton. His memory is filled with highly classified information that the Soviets and North Vietnamese badly want. When Hambleton is shot down in the midst of North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive, US forces place the entire war on hold to save a single man hiding amongst 30,000 enemy troops and tanks. Airborne rescue missions fail, killing eleven Americans. Finally, Navy SEAL Thomas Norris and his Vietnamese guide, Nguyen Van Kiet, volunteer to go after him on foot. Gliding past hundreds of enemy soldiers, it takes them days to reach Hambleton, who, guided toward his rescuers via improvised radio code, is barely alive, deeply malnourished, and hallucinating after eleven days on the run. In this deeply-researched, untold story, award-winning author Stephan Talty describes the extraordinary mission that led Hambleton to safety. Drawing from dozens of interviews and access to unpublished papers, Saving Bravo is the riveting story of one of the greatest rescue missions in the history of the Special Forces.

The F-117 Stealth Nighthawk was a truly groundbreaking aircraft when introduced in the early 1980s. The strange shape of the jet, all flat panels and angles, rendered the aircraft nearly invisible to radar. This highly classified program wasn’t acknowledged publicly by the U.S. Air Force until 1988. The Nighthawk was retired in 2008 after twenty-five years of service, including bombing missions over Panama, Iraq during both Gulf Wars, andYugoslavia during the Kosovo war. Brad O’Connor flew the Nighthawk during the NATO bombing campaign over Kosovo in 1999. His first-person experience puts the reader in the cockpit of this revolutionary combat aircraft. From his F-117 assignment through training, deployment, mission planning, and combat flights, O’Connor relates the day-to-day life of a pilot in the world’s first stealth fighter.

From World War II to high above the Earth to Vietnam, this memoir tells the story of fighter pilot Howard C. “Scrappy” Johnson. Beginning with his early years in Knoxville, Tennessee, the book follows Johnson through his career at the University of Louisville and his enlistment as an Air Force cadet at the onset of World War II. After World War II, Johnson served a tour of duty in the skies over Korea and in 1958 broke the world’s altitude record by over 14,000 feet, soaring at 91,249 feet in his F–104A Starfighter. For this remarkable feat he was awarded the Collier Trophy, aviation’s highest honor. In Vietnam, he was director of operations for the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing and was instrumental in founding the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots, a group dedicated to the remembrance of fallen and captured airmen. Written with panache, this work records the bigger-than-life adventures of one of America’s finest.

Hell Hawks sets a new standard for histories of the tactical anti-war in Europe. Veteran authors Bob Dorr and Tom Jones combine masterfully crafted veteran interviews with the broader picture of the air war fought by the Thunderbolt men. You gain a new appreciation of just how tough their deadly task was, and the courage needed to fly close air support against the Nazi fighters and flak. This outstanding book raises the bar on aviation history as it brings alive the true story of an aerial band of brothers." - Colonel Walter J. Boyne, National Aviation Hall of Famer, former director of the National Air & Space Museum, and best-selling author Hell Hawks! is the story of the band of young American fighter pilots, and their gritty, close-quarters fight against Hitlers vaunted military. The "Hell Hawks" were the men and machines of the 365th Fighter Group. Beginning just prior to D-Day, June 6, 1944, the groups young pilots (most were barely twenty years old and fresh from flight training in the United States) flew in close support of Eisenhowers ground forces as they advanced across France and into Germany. They flew the rugged, heavily armed P-47 Thunderbolt, aka the Jug. Living in tents amid the cold mud of their front-line airfields, the 365ths daily routine had much in common with that of the G.I.s they supported. Their war only stopped with the Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945. During their year in combat, the Hell Hawks paid a heavy price to win the victory. Sixty-nine pilots and airmen died in the fight across the continent. The Groups 1,241 combat missions -- the daily confrontation of sudden, violent death -- forged bonds between these men that remain strong sixty years later. This book will tell their story, the story of the Hell Hawks.

The popular conception of the Vietnam War focuses on the ground war—the soldiers and grunts who humped along jungle trails and fought the Vietcong face to face—but an important part of the war was waged in the skies over Southeast Asia, and indeed many of the war’s most well-known figures were pilots, from John McCain and James Stockdale to the unknown men who unleashed napalm hell and who carried out Curtis LeMay’s “bomb them into the Stone Age” doctrine, Lyndon Johnson’s Rolling Thunder, and Richard Nixon’s Linebacker. This photo book chronicles the U.S. Air Force’s operations in Vietnam, covering the aircraft, munitions, battle damage, and uniforms of Vietnam in the air.